


If It Takes All Night

by tackytiger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Bedsharing, Bonding, Coy Wanking, Drink Spiking, Drinking, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Forced Bonding, Forced Proximity, Friendship, Idiots in Love, Keep your eyes on yourself HJP, Kissing, Love Potion/Spell, Lust Potion/Spell, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, One Shot, POV Harry Potter, Potions Accident, Quidditch Player Draco Malfoy, Quidditch Player Harry Potter, Sharing a Bed, Soul Bond, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger
Summary: It's not the first time Harry's been the victim of a botched curse (that's one of the reasons he doesn't like crowds), but he feels bad that Malfoy had to get caught up in it too.So they're bonded. That's ok, they just have to make sure to be touching at all time. No problem. Because Malfoy smells so nice, and has such lovely shiny hair, and his skin is so very warm.But this isn't going to be a problem for their friendship at all.Is it, Harry?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 194
Kudos: 1844
Collections: Lock Down Fest





	If It Takes All Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zigster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigster/gifts).



> For Zigs - for being there.
> 
> I have been very, very ill while writing this (nothing terrible or permanent, just utter grottiness), so forgive any flights of fancy. I had to indulge myself to keep my mind off things, for maximum self-pity.
> 
> Huge thanks to maesterchill and onereader for reading over this so beautifully at the very last minute. You two are the actual best. 
> 
> To the other Lock Down mods - it's been an absolute pleasure! Thank you for your amazing work at such a trying time.
> 
> For reference - CCSV is Closed Circuit Spellovision. It didn't work within the narrative to spell it out but it doesn't make sense if I don't tell you in advance either 😂😂😂
> 
> Title is from the Frank Black song rather than the Roxy Music song, just fyi. I was going for jaunty pining with this one.

Bodies move under the blacklight, bright and slick and shifting like fish in dark water. Harry supposes his friends are here somewhere, moving through the murk, part of the hot press of bodies around him, but he can’t see them and he doesn’t really care that much.

He can feel the music in the soles of his feet, the pulse of it knocking at the inside of his breastbone, buzzing at the base of his skull. He feels like he could dance all night. 

He’s wet through with sweat and whatever drink he’s spilled all over himself, because he can barely move in the scrum let alone get his mouth to his glass easily. He’s had too much to drink, probably—no more than usual, but that’s not saying much—but the weight of the booze steadies him a bit, makes it easier for him to be there, dancing in a crowded club just like everyone else. Harry doesn’t like crowds, generally.

Tonight it’s ok, though. His friends are here—and his whole team is here too, drowning their sorrows no doubt—and he’s hot all over from dancing and everyone is smiling at him and it all feels _good_ , and safe. He lets his head fall back, moves like everything is easy (and it is, tonight, though it isn’t always). 

The same song is still playing when he feels a hand at his wrist. When he opens his eyes he has to blink against the strobes. Malfoy is there, right in front of him. His hair glows pink then purple then back to silver under the petroleum sheen of the lights. He’s shouting something in Harry’s ear, making the drinks motion with his hand to his mouth, and then he turns and moves through the crowd to the bar. About eight people follow him, his teammates and some of Harry’s too, and some people Harry doesn’t even recognise. But Malfoy’s always like that—he talks so much and so widely that he tends to collect people along his way. Some of them even stick around. 

Another drink sounds like as good an idea as any, especially if Malfoy’s buying. And he should be, it’s their arrangement on match days that the winner buys. And what a win it was, Harry thinks ruefully—or as ruefully as someone as drunk and feckless as him can be, anyway. Him and Malfoy, just like old times—elbow to elbow, knee to knee, two fingers’ length behind the Snitch. And Malfoy throwing himself off his broom to get to it first, right into thin air sixty feet up, knowing that Harry, like a fool, would cast a Cushioning Charm for him. The Portree fans on their feet, the whole stadium a solid drum of jubilant sound—no wonder Malfoy was known as The Pride of the Prides. And it didn’t even matter that they had won—the Wasps were so far ahead on points that Portree needn’t have even bothered showing up for the game. But show up they did, and thanks to Malfoy it had been, well, it had been spectacular, even Harry could admit it. But he deserved his drink after that trouncing.

Malfoy’s already at the bar, and he’s snagged himself a stool, the jammy bastard. He’s talking animatedly to someone—Jules, Harry thinks it might be, though that can’t be right because he’s pretty sure that Malfoy broke up with Jules a while back. He knows these things about Malfoy, you see, because he and Malfoy are sort of, almost, best friends now. They don’t see each other much—Malfoy stays on Skye most of the week, and Harry Floos from Grimmauld to Dorset at the crack of dawn each day, and home again every evening with every muscle in his body limp and achey from the intense training regime his coach insists on. But they Floocall each other quite a bit—most days, really, not to say anything in particular, but just to check in. And of course they often see each other on weekends—not every time, but a lot. And sometimes Harry doesn’t feel like dancing, and doesn’t want to be surrounded by people, and when that happens, Malfoy is usually there. 

Because Malfoy doesn’t really love crowds either (is this a battle survivors’ thing, Harry wonders when he sees Ron leaning with the wall at his back like he always does, and knowing that they’d had to leave Neville in the pub because he doesn’t even try going into clubs anymore, not after the last few panic attacks). 

Malfoy just says that he prefers being able to have a proper chat rather than shouting over music, though more often than not their chatting just consists of Harry listening to him while he talks. And Harry likes it a lot—likes sitting in a corner out of the crush, with Malfoy’s mouth close to his ear, his voice an amused, soothing murmur. Sometimes, if things get too much, they go outside and they smoke (secretly, with Notice-Me-Nots up in case the papers get a hold of any photos and their coaches give them shit for it) and Malfoy talks a lot and Harry talks a bit, and sometimes they go for food together—food that their coaches would frown on, from a Muggle chippy with laminated menus that are tacky to the touch. It’s so much fun, eating hot chips sharp with vinegar and talking back and forth about nothing in particular. When Harry gets home late on those nights, his curls smell of frying fat and curry sauce, and he’s usually put his elbow in some ketchup, and his face hurts from smiling.

Most of the time, being friends with Malfoy is like that—fun, and simple in a way that Harry’s never known before. Malfoy is so easy to read, you see; partly because Harry’s known him, known so much about him, for over half their lives; but mostly because Malfoy can’t hide a single thing he’s thinking. He talks so much that things just come tripping out, a torrent of opinions and feelings and requests and hopes. It’s all that most people can do to keep up, most of the time, but Harry likes to listen and anyway, even when Malfoy was the biggest prick in school, he was always interesting, so it’s not hard to _get_ him now, when he in turn is so keen to give so much of himself to Harry.

Though sometimes it is a bit hard, being friends with Malfoy. It’s not his fault, as such, or at least it’s nothing that he does nowadays. But sometimes, when Harry’s laughing at something outrageous Malfoy has said about the Wimbourne back line, or they’re arguing loudly about tactics, or Harry finds himself telling Malfoy something important—usually something embarrassing or private, wrenched out of him unexpectedly by Malfoy’s own disarming honesty about himself—he feels guilty. Guilty for liking Malfoy so much, guilty for _trusting_ him. 

Because Harry remembers him from school—so well, Harry’s never really been much good at letting things go—and when he thinks about that, and then looks at Malfoy, he can see the curl of his mouth around the word _Mudblood_ , and the way Malfoy had laughed at Hagrid, who was never anything but kind to everyone, because Malfoy had seen kindness as a weakness back then. 

And when Malfoy buys a round of drinks as casually as he does, Harry remembers him laughing about the Weasleys, and how _expensive_ Malfoy had always seemed (and still does, with his lovely smelling skin and the sheen of his hair and the way all his fancy clothes sit just right, like he was born to wear them). Harry has to repeat in his mind what his Mind Healer tells him in their sessions—that Ron’s pain is Ron’s to manage. (Ron manages by gleefully reminding Malfoy that he could buy and sell him a few times over now that WWW has gone global). That Harry doesn’t have to forgive Malfoy for all the things he did to other people. That Harry has enough things of his own to forgive Malfoy for, if he wants to. Knowing that helps. And Harry keeps reminding himself of it, just as he reminds himself that Malfoy understands the _value_ of things, now—that he sees what has worth and what doesn’t. 

Harry’s gone over all this stuff a lot with Caroline, who he still sees regularly for reasons he’s no longer ashamed of. It’s helped, talking with her about Malfoy over all these years. She told him he has nothing to feel guilty about. That forgiving Malfoy is his privilege, and Harry deserves to be able to make that decision. That Harry can trust himself to know what he needs from a friendship, to know what’s good for him. That’s a nice feeling. So when Malfoy looks up from his conversation at the bar and sees Harry, and pauses right in the middle of waving his arms around to punctuate whatever story he’s telling, just to give Harry one of those lovely smiles that he keeps for his very favourite people, Harry reminds himself that he’s allowed to be happy about it. That he’s allowed to smile back as much as he wants to. So he does.

Malfoy shouts over the noise of the club. 

“Potter, pause whatever inept personal crisis you’re having and come and get your drink. You’re looking grim and it’s ruining my big night.”

Some of Malfoy’s newer teammates and the absolute strangers he’s gathered over the course of the night look utterly horrified. They probably either have no idea that this is just what Harry and Malfoy do, or else have somehow managed to miss the fact that Malfoy is only rude to his very closest friends. To everyone else he’s completely charming, or glacially polite in the case of the people who still, sometimes, spit at him or call him names when they pass him in the street. He says it’s because he has impeccable manners, but Harry knows that it’s really because there’s a part of him that agrees with them, that thinks he deserves it. 

Malfoy turns smiling to the person sitting next to him, and starts talking rapidly and gesturing at Harry. Harry sighs and starts to shove through the swell at the bar to get to where Malfoy’s sitting, just in time to hear him mention something insulting and untrue about Harry’s physical condition, and spell damage from his duel with Voldemort, and the man slips down from the stool with a reverent look at Harry and offers him the seat.

Harry takes it, and leans in to Malfoy.

“You know, you needn’t bother lying to people. I can just ask, flash the scar a bit. That usually does the trick.”

Malfoy laughs delightedly at that, like he always does when Harry is a bit of a shit. Harry knows he thinks Harry is too soft sometimes. Behind Malfoy, Jules shifts in his seat, gives Harry a nod. Harry narrows his eyes in return. Jules doesn’t like Harry—not that he’s ever said anything much, but he had told Draco that he thought Harry was hanging around too much, and did they have to speak _every_ night? Harry had heard the whole thing of course, Jules’ Muffliato was crap, and Malfoy had been gently non-committal in his murmured replies, so Harry had spent a full week living in a sort of cold terror that Malfoy would actually stop calling him, and stop seeing him at weekends. 

But he didn’t stop, and on the one night that Harry didn’t Floocall when he was supposed to, Malfoy had just called him instead even though it wasn’t his night. He didn’t ask Harry why he hadn’t been in touch, but sat curled in front of the fire complaining about the wind drag on his new broom for a full fifteen minutes, until Harry was lulled back into a sense of security and Malfoy was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed in the flames. And they went on completely as normal.

Harry thinks it might be a bit presumptuous of him to say it, but he’s also fairly certain that Malfoy had broken up with Jules because of it all. He hadn’t done anything so gauche as argue with Jules, and most people probably wouldn’t have even noticed any change in Malfoy and how he was acting. But Harry noticed. He saw Malfoy getting more and more charming—because he loved being liked, Malfoy did, he wouldn’t have wanted Jules to hate him—but making himself less and less accessible. 

When they went to the pub, he flitted from seat to seat in a dash of colour and laughter, kissing Jules on the forehead as he went, buying his drinks for the night, but never letting himself be caught or held for any length of time. He pulled back, so slowly and so gently that he made it look like he was doing Jules a favour when he broke things off—in the pub, surrounded by people, where Jules couldn’t make too much of a scene—his mobile face cast into solemnity as he talked low and confiding and regretful into Jules’ ear for twenty minutes, then hugged him and left. It was so gracefully and lightly done, Harry didn’t think anyone else had even noticed, and though Jules looked a bit bewildered by the whole thing, Harry had heard him later that night telling Susan that he just thought it was the right time to take a break, that Draco was so busy with work these days. He even looked as though he might really believe it had all been his idea.

Jules doesn’t come out with them so often anymore—he was only ever really there for Malfoy—but whenever he does appear he spends his whole time following Malfoy around with a brightly expectant, hopeful look on his face that Harry finds infuriating. Sometimes he thinks, secretly and nastily, that he’s glad Jules got what he deserved, for trying to get in the way of Harry’s friendship with Malfoy. But mostly he’s just glad ( _relieved_ ) that Malfoy chose him.

He gets less glad when Malfoy slips him a sideways look of pure amusement and elbows him hard in the ribcage. “Be nice,” he whispers into Harry’s ear, his mouth so close that Harry can hear him over the din. Harry rolls his eyes but then attempts a proper smile at Jules. 

“You owe me a drink,” he says as he elbows Malfoy back, and Malfoy’s face lights up with the sort of glee that Harry has learned to dread.

“I do owe you a drink! Because I am the winner! And of course the loser shall have a drink, poor thing.” He gestures expansively at their little group. “Shots!”

Harry shakes his head emphatically but Malfoy is already twirling on his high stool and grinning at the barman. Jules elbows in next to him, his hand resting possessively on Malfoy’s lower back. Malfoy gives him a smile, bright and kind and fleeting, and Jules bends his face in close for a quicksilver second before Malfoy slides like water from under his hand and comes over to Harry.

“You’ll drink it and you’ll like it, Potter,” he says, gesturing carelessly at the tray that’s being filled with dangerously pink shots. Jules smiles tiredly over his shoulder and takes his coin purse out, puts his hand up to Malfoy who’s pulling a handful of winking Galleons from his pocket. “I owe you,” he shouts to Malfoy, and Malfoy rolls his eyes fondly and mouths a thank you back.

Harry nods at Jules and leans in close to Malfoy. “He’s doing his best to get back in your good books,” he says, and hopes that it’s too loud in here for Malfoy to pick up the little thread of meanness that runs through everything he says when he talks about Jules.

Malfoy scoffs. “We’re still friends, you know,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else, just touches Harry on the arm once, too briefly, and goes to help Jules pass the shots out to the others. Ron arrives and wedges himself against the bar near Harry with a smile, as if summoned by the prospect of more booze. Luna is still dancing. 

Harry smiles back at Ron and thinks about how he’s never been able to stay friends with his exes. How Ginny still hates him, just a little bit, though they’re still working hard to get through it. How Ronan had disappeared after the _Prophet_ printed his kiss and tell, and Harry had never even got to ask him why he bothered to pretend to care about Harry, if all he’d wanted was to sell the story of how Harry fucked. How Andel had been so sick of Harry that he had actually _moved countries_ to get away from him. They had both cried when he’ had told Harry, but no matter how sad they were, they still couldn’t make it work. _Still friends_ sounds pretty good to Harry.

Harry can see why everyone wants to be friends with Malfoy, as he watches him laughing and handing drinks around before making his way back to Harry. It’s not like with Harry, where most people want to be friends with him because of the scar, and the war, and the League-winning Seeker thing. People want to be friends with Malfoy despite themselves, he’s that compelling. Even everyone who’s supposed to hate him (even _Harry himself_ ) wants to be friends with him.

Jules comes crowding after Malfoy, two of the noxious-looking shots in his hands. He smiles winsomely at Malfoy before the same smile turns chilly for Harry. 

“So sorry, Potter. Forgot yours.” He hands one to Malfoy. “Cheers, Draco.”

Harry rolls his eyes and gets up to head to the bar himself, but Malfoy stops him with an arm around his neck. His eyes are glittering and his body is warm and solid, and Harry has just realised how drunk they both are.

“Poor Potter,” Malfoy croons. In one swift motion—he’s far too coordinated for someone who’s been drinking as much as he obviously has—he takes a healthy gulp, then presses the glass to Harry’s mouth. “Bottoms up,” he says, and with the hand that’s still wrapped around Harry’s neck he places two fingers under Harry’s chin and presses. 

And Harry just does it, allows Malfoy to tip his head back, and he opens his mouth and lets the slightly chemical heat of the booze slide down his throat, while Malfoy’s fingers rest lightly against the bob of his swallow. Harry has a moment to enjoy the warmth of the fingers, and the booze, and the satisfaction of seeing Jules’ eyes running from Harry’s mouth to the splay of Malfoy’s hand as his face crumples in a raw sort of dismay. But there isn’t much time to rest there in the loose reassuring circle of Malfoy’s arm, because there’s a flicker of _something_ off to the side, something a little bit wrong, like a flash of lightning zipping low through the crowd. And someone screams, and Ron starts to move towards the light, fast and protective, and everything seems odd all of sudden. 

And Harry wonders when he lost his instinct for this stuff, but then he can’t think about much anymore because he _feels_ something in his stomach, a deep tug of unfamiliar magic like something trying to get at him from the inside out, and he looks at Malfoy and sees the same panic mirrored on his face. And then, after a moment of pure stillness, the weird magic comes roaring out of him with a _whump_ and a blast, and everyone ducks. 

It looks like some of them are screaming, but Harry can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears. Malfoy has his face close to Harry, and his mouth is moving rapidly as he pats Harry’s face, even as he holds a hand to his own stomach with a sort of restrained tension that tells Harry he’s probably in quite a lot of pain. The same pain, perhaps, that Harry’s feeling, the one that’s crawling through him like a _Crucio_ taking anything he tries to say to Malfoy away in a hot pant of agony. It feels like a long time, standing there with Malfoy’s hand clammy and shaking where it’s pressed flat against Harry’s cheek, but it can’t be too long, because Ron barely has time to reach them before Harry feels his eyes start to shut and finally, mercifully, everything goes dark.

* * *

It isn’t a gentle waking. When Harry opens his eyes (who knows how much later) he’s in St Mungo’s, and his whole body hurts, and everyone is shouting. He closes his eyes again.

Ron is there, the thinnest edge of panic in his voice that would have Harry worried if he could think about anything beyond the hot licks of pain running through him. He’s probably the loudest voice in the room, and he sounds a bit frantic as he talks to… is it Hermione? It is, Harry thinks with relief so profound it almost helps the pain. She was on shift, that’s why she hadn’t been out with them in the first place. And that’s good, Harry tells himself reassuringly. If Hermione is here, she’ll know what to do, or she’ll make it her business to find out.

Hermione sounds brisk but irritated, and as Harry listens to the third voice in the room he can tell why. It’s Jules, he thinks, and Jules sounds pissed off. 

“I should be here with him,” he’s saying (shouting, really) and Hermione must have been having this conversation for a while because she sounds as though she’s losing patience. 

“You are not his next of kin, and you’re not a family member. I need you to leave now,” she says, and anyone less of an idiot than Jules would be halfway out the door at the frost in her voice. Harry would smile at that, if he could. Hermione hates Jules too. 

“I won’t leave him alone! I want to be there for him when he wakes. You can’t force me to go,” Jules says in a brave tone. Hermione says nothing, just sighs, and there’s a faint rustle as she reaches into her sleeve. Harry decides that it might be a good time to open his eyes again, because if anything can help him to feel slightly better, it’ll be seeing Jules getting his arse handed to him by Hermione Granger in her lime green robes.

He just has time to savour the beautiful sight of Jules looking distinctly alarmed as Hermione pulls her wand on him, when a slight groan (half pained, half irritated) interrupts proceedings. Harry turns in the bed (and it still hurts, so much that he has to make a small embarrassing noise as he does it, which leads to everyone in the room turning to look at him instead) and sees Malfoy in the next bed, trying to sit up and looking very pale and dangerous, and so cross that Harry knows he must be feeling pretty ropey himself.

And in between Hermione coming over to murmur some diagnostic spells over them, and Malfoy forgetting to be polite to Jules for once, and telling him through gritted teeth that he can stay if he just shuts up for five minutes, Harry starts to get the picture. A curse? Something odd anyway—he remembers that uncanny flash of light shooting through the crowd, the panic and shouting. It’s not unusual, really—he’s had his share of attacks, since the war, mostly a bit useless and botched. This is the first really awful one, which isn’t bad going really, though he feels fairly shitty about Malfoy getting caught up in the whole thing. And Hermione is (obviously) really, _really_ good at her job so he knows it’ll probably all be fine.

So he sits quietly and lets Hermione ask all her questions, and he answers them, and then Malfoy does the same. And Jules shuts up like he’s supposed to, and Ron stops shouting, and then Seamus sticks his head around the door to ask some questions for the investigation, and even though he still feels awful, he knows he’s being taken care of and that’s nice at least.

“I need you both to stand up, please,” Hermione tells them. And it takes a little while, and involves a level of yet more small, embarrassing noises and even for one moment Harry thinking he might actually cry from the sheer agony of it, but eventually they're both on their feet between the two beds.

“Harry,” Hermione says, and her smile is so loving that Harry feels those fucking tears close to the surface again. “Would you please touch Draco?” 

It is an odd one, that’s for sure, and Jules makes a soft noise of disgust from across the room, but Harry reaches out for Malfoy straightaway, because he always does what Hermione says. Malfoy’s in a t-shirt, thin black stripes on white cotton, sleeves gaping, and his arms are bare. When Harry grabs him by the forearm, he twists a hand to clasp Harry back, and his arm is warm and reassuring under Harry’s grip. And then, “Oh,” Malfoy says, and he sounds as surprised and pleased as Harry feels because the pain is gone, just like that, snuffed out like a candle. 

“This isn’t good, is it, Granger?”

Malfoy and Harry are still holding onto each other. Harry can feel the flutter of Malfoy’s pulsepoint pressed against his own, and he likes feeling better, and Malfoy being warm and safe and nearby, and seeing up close the small fond distracted smile Malfoy gives him. 

“Unfortunately not.” Hermione sighs, gets them to separate their hands, and then shakes her head when they grab for each other again as the pain hits. “You’re bonded, obviously, somehow. I’ll need blood samples. Luckily these bonding curses are usually unstable and easy to break. Meanwhile, you two just stick close.” She smiles evilly at Harry. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

* * *

It is actually quite comfortable. They sit together on the bed and once their skin is touching they’re totally fine, and Malfoy chats to Harry just like normal, quiet and continuous, and they both ignore Jules. Harry feels fine, for the most part, bright and and strangely cheerful, so he figures if the curse was a dangerous one, he’d probably know it by now.

Jules isn’t happy about it, though. He looks pale and cross and keeps casting worried glances Malfoy’s way (which, to be fair, Harry understands. If he were in love with Malfoy, he’d want to look at him all the time too). Jules can’t just leave it there, of course, which is how it happens.

They’re trying to get off the bed without losing hold on each other, and Harry is teetering on the edge of the high bed and trying to lever Malfoy up with him, and they can’t stop laughing even as they stumble across the room, shaking out their stiff legs. Jules tuts, rolls his eyes, and then stands abruptly.

Harry sees it coming, but he doesn’t have time to react before Jules steps right up to Malfoy and puts an arm around him, makes to draw him away. And then it’s too late to do anything, because Harry is levelled by the pain of it, an agonising throb in the same place where Jules’ arm lies over Malfoy’s shoulder. It’s even worse than the pain that hits when they’re not touching. Harry can feel it in his teeth and his eyeballs and his fingernails. It’s too much, after everything, and Harry falls to his knees, where he manages (rather impressively under the circumstances, he thinks) to be tidily sick into a small wastepaper bin. 

He has just enough energy to look up at the disgust on Jules’ face (which is a bit rich, Harry thinks—he’d managed to get it all in the bin, after all) before Malfoy is in front of him, and Hermione is finally able to get Jules out of the room.

Malfoy’s voice is vicious as he tells Jules to get out, but he’s so gentle when he picks Harry up that Harry can’t help a whimper escaping. It’s ok though, because Malfoy presses his face into Harry’s neck and murmurs to him, just nonsensical soft words that don’t mean anything at all but that make Harry feel better, and Harry gets to stand there with Malfoy’s lean bare arms holding onto him fiercely and Malfoy’s magic washing over him, cleaning him up and warming him so the shivers stop.

“Right.” 

The way Hermione says it, Harry knows that things aren’t ideal. 

“This is… a complication. Not unheard of,” she adds hastily, “just unusual.” She pokes Harry on the arm with a fingertip, and when Malfoy winces and hisses under his breath she moves back fast, peering at the monitoring charms. “Okay, we need to keep you both in isolation—really don’t want to risk anyone else touching either of you if it’s going to put your bodies under this kind of stress.”

Harry thinks she might keep talking after that, but he can’t seem to concentrate on what she’s saying. He’s getting distracted, he realises. It’s Malfoy, he thinks—the smell of him, so near—and he inches even closer and lets his head drop onto Malfoy’s shoulder. It’s good here—the curling ends of Malfoy’s hair are close enough that they stir every time Harry breathes out, and he watches the slide and quiver of the glossy strands with fascination. And better yet, when he blows gently, the hair moves off Malfoy’s neck, and then Harry can see the whole creamy stretch of it and more: the sharp tensing line of Malfoy’s jaw; the three beauty spots like a constellation on Malfoy’s cheek; the silvered line of a scar that runs from below Malfoy’s collar to just behind his ear. He’s noticed all these things before, of course, but he can’t remember why he hasn’t ever really _looked_ at them before, or told Malfoy how lovely they are. 

He thinks he should rectify that, while he’s here in Malfoy’s arms, and they’re already so intertwined that he hardly even needs to move so that his mouth is on Malfoy’s skin. He puts his tongue to the scar—it’s so faded that he can barely feel the mark of it at first, but he discovers that if he goes extra slowly he can follow the whole line of it right up to the warm, fragrant patch of skin just behind Malfoy’s ear. Malfoy starts (with surprise, he thinks, though why would this come as a shock to Malfoy, he wonders? Surely with the way Malfoy looks, and smells, people must try to lick him all the time? Maybe that’s not a thing, Harry thinks, but it should be) but he doesn’t move away from Harry. Instead, his arms tighten, and Harry is suddenly conscious of all that bare skin and muscle going unappreciated. He runs a hand right up Malfoy’s arm until he gets inside Malfoy’s sleeve to cup the smooth curve of his shoulder, press along the delicate ridge of his clavicle. It’s not enough.

Harry is dimly aware that Malfoy is shivering, and his eyes are closed. His lashes—impossibly long, that startling inky black so at odds with the silver-gilt of his hair—flicker once, twice, then he shuts his eyes and tips his head back. It’s permission, Harry thinks—encouragement, even—and now there’s more skin to explore. Harry dips down to the base of Malfoy’s throat (inhales), kisses the crest of his Adam’s apple, lazily curious, like he has all the time in the world. 

“Potter?” 

Malfoy’s voice is thin and strained, like he’s keeping himself quiet on purpose, and Harry laughs into the velvety bit of skin just under his chin, and earns himself a half-held gasp in return, which he likes the sound of. 

He wants more of those little noises, he thinks, and rubs his face against Malfoy’s, hard like a cat’s nudge, their stubble catching. His mouth is at those three little beauty marks that sit just on the plump bit between Malfoy’s jaw and cheekbone . _Fairy kisses_ he thinks, absent-mindedly, and he likes that, thinks it sounds right, says it out loud into the kisses he’s laying against Malfoy’s skin.

That’s what stops it all. 

Malfoy stiffens up and pulls back hard so all of him is far away from Harry’s mouth. Harry hears himself make what he vaguely knows is an embarrassing little noise of protest, but Malfoy no longer looks soft and pink and satisfied like he had when Harry was kissing him (like a sort of aristocratic marshmallow) . He looks sad.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, at the same time as Hermione who seems to be hovering, trying to get between them without touching either of them. 

“Potter, what did you say there? When you were—” and Harry watches in fascination as Malfoy pauses, uncharacteristically discomfited, then flushes. “I mean, when you were… my freckles… you said something?”

Harry frowns. “Fairy kisses,” he says. “It sounded… nice? In my head?”

Draco looks at him, face unreadable. 

“It was. Nice, I mean. But where did you get the name from?”

Harry tries to think back. It’s a bit easier now that he’s that bit further away from Malfoy, tethered only by their intertwined fingers. He’s not happy about this new distance, mind you, and he decides to try to answer Malfoy so that he can get his mouth back on Malfoy’s skin at the earliest possible opportunity—next stop, that small worried crease between Malfoy’s eyebrows. Harry bets he could kiss that right away if he got the chance.

“It just popped into my head. I don’t know, I’ve never thought…” _I’ve never thought of anyone’s freckles as pretty, before_ , is what he doesn’t say.

Malfoy doesn’t look away from Harry for a second, even when he addresses Hermione.

“Granger, I think this might be another symptom. My mum used to kiss those freckles, and that’s what she used to say when she did it. I thought of it, just there, when Potter was… well, it reminded me of that. And just as I thought it, he said it. This isn’t good, right?”

Harry thinks crossly about how Hermione is now going to do some sort of annoying tests on them, and how she’s almost certainly going to need Malfoy on the bed, and not being pushed up against the wall by Harry and kissed until he’s shaking. And Harry loves Hermione, but really it’s totally unreasonable of her to be getting in the way like this, and as he ducks around her and pulls Malfoy close to him again, he thinks he’ll probably just Disapparate them both out of there so they can get on with things. 

And Malfoy seems to think that’s a good idea because he murmurs something unintelligible and tangles his hands right into Harry’s curls and looks at Harry’s mouth with something sweet and longing in his eyes, but then Harry hears Hermione’s voice, brisk and irritated, as she swears fervently and then starts to cast something, and for the second time in one night Harry feels his eyes closing and someone taking Malfoy away from him.

* * *

Grimmauld is weirdly cosy with Malfoy in it. 

They don’t normally spend time at each other’s houses. Malfoy keeps a weird rented flat in Stoke Newington, even though he’s hardly ever there. It’s Muggle, so too much magic sends the electrics haywire. 

So they have to be in Grimmauld because they can’t go to Malfoy’s shitty little flat, because of the magic thing. In order for Hermione to agree to release them from Mungo’s, Harry had to let her set up monitoring charms all around the house so she can be sure that they don’t die or whatever before she works out how to break the bond (though realistically unless it’s possible to die from a permanent hard-on, Harry thinks he’s fairly safe).

They have to be in Grimmauld because Seamus says the Aurors can only do so much to keep out the press, who have been hanging around the hospital foyer waiting to get the most embarrassing and invasive photo of Harry that they can, and aforementioned permanent hard-on is likely to feature large in that as soon as one of them gets past the security team (and they will, Seamus mutters darkly). Seamus is keen that the details of the attack aren’t made public while the case is still wide open, and he’s added auror-level monitoring spells to Hermione’s. No one is getting in or out of Grimmauld without the Auror department knowing.

And they have to be in Grimmauld because the bond is ramping up and there’s a very real chance that, at some point, Harry is going to climb on top of Malfoy and try to take all his clothes off, or vice versa, and Harry isn’t ready for Hermione to see that. 

Malfoy doesn’t come to Grimmauld often. Harry would like him to—likes it a lot, on the odd occasion that he does come over. It had taken him a while, though. He’d see Malfoy curled up on the couch in the second sitting room, waving a cut glass tumbler around while talking very earnestly about nothing important, and he’d wonder, what would Sirius think about this? It felt really wrong at the start, liking having Malfoy around, in the same place where the Order had planned the fight against Voldemort, and where Harry had been so sad for so long. 

But maybe that’s why Malfoy doesn’t come around often, Harry thinks. Because he knows what happened here, and how much was lost, and he’s still so ashamed of himself even now that he probably can’t let himself feel welcome in Grimmauld, even if his mother’s crest is above the door and his own name embroidered on the tapestry in the drawing room. 

But he’s here now because he has to be, and Harry likes it a lot. Likes Draco sliding round the kitchen in his socks as he makes tea, dragging Harry around after him by the wrist. Likes Draco rampaging through the library, passing books back to Harry and muttering to himself, head tilted sideways to read the spines as he goes, Harry’s fingers sliding loosely over the skin above his waistband. He especially likes Draco at the opposite end of the couch, his bare feet intertwined with Harry’s as he happily ignores Harry while he reads. 

It’s all a bit of a blur, really. But judging by their experience in the hospital (and by experience, Harry means the kissing and the licking and the weird new mental link) the bond is getting stronger and the side effects are getting even weirder. And Harry would prefer to be in the privacy of his own home while he gets used to them. And he supposes he should be worried about getting the bond broken, but really it’s not all that bad. Yes, it’s a bit of a pain in the arse having to be touching another person at all times. There have already been two very awkward toilet situations which they’ve overcome with enthusiastic _Muffliato_ s and the fervent screwing shut of eyes. But it could be worse. He’s bonded to Malfoy, after all. And Malfoy is funny and smells delicious and has warm skin and makes a good cup of tea. If Harry has to follow someone around with his hand on random body parts, he’s glad it’s Malfoy.

They’d practiced a bit, in the hospital, checking where the edges of the bond lay. It wasn’t like Legilimency, not any kind that Harry knew anyway. It was more a fuzzy sort of thing, like Harry could _feel_ what Malfoy was feeling. Occasionally he’d got flashes of images based on whatever Malfoy was thinking about—Pansy laughing barefoot in a garden with her high-heeled shoes hung from her fingertips; about a hundred memories of Boris, Malfoy’s crup, because Malfoy is obsessed with Boris and not at all happy about potentially not seeing him all weekend; Oliver Wood in his Portree kit shouting as loud as he had all those times on the Hogwarts pitch; Harry himself, on his broom, laughing at Malfoy over his shoulder and looking embarrassingly fond as he does it.

And they’d done some checks on what Hermione was calling the compulsion part of the bond. Which was pretty decent of her, to essentially medicalise Harry basically having tried to get his mouth on every bit of exposed skin on Draco’s body in front of her and two of the St Mungo’s nurses. And she’d even kicked Ron out while they did it, despite him insisting he should be allowed to stay to watch (just for the sake of being able to tell all their friends about it next pub night).

The compulsion thing is the least weird part of it all, Harry thinks. He’s self-aware enough to know that he sort of fancies Malfoy, not that he would _ever_ let anyone know, and _especially_ not Malfoy himself. Because he likes him so much more than he fancies him, and they’ve put so much effort into getting where they are—the joyful freedom of their friendship, the shared understanding that everything they have is sort of a reward for how hard they've worked not to be twats to each other anymore—that Harry would never chance making a move. 

But this bond—for whatever bizarre, unfathomable reason—has them bamboozled, absolutely stone mad for each other. They’re ok when they’re just holding hands, there’s nothing more than the usual tug of the complicated, fond sort of want that he usually feels when he’s around Malfoy (he has eyes, after all). But the closer they get, the worse the pull. The more their bare skin touches, the worse the pull. The more they open up the mental link, the worse the pull. And the pull means kissing, and touching, and if it weren’t for Hermione intervening each time, Harry doesn’t think they’d have stopped at that.

But that’s fine—fine by Harry, anyway. It’s not that he’s enjoying being bonded to Malfoy, but it’s nice to get to kiss his fine, satiny skin. It’s nice to get to reach out and touch the firm, shifting muscles of Malfoy’s stomach, or run a hand along his arm, or to hook a foot around his calf and reel him in close (all in the name of research, of course, you are welcome, Hermione). It’s nice to get to hear him making those small contented noises—to be the person who gets to _make_ him make those small contented noises. It’s nice to hear the low rumble of his laughter, and feel his teeth tugging at Harry’s earlobe before he says quietly and delightedly, so only Harry can hear, “This bond really wants us to bone, Potter.” Harry is pretty sure they shouldn’t be doing so much laughing considering they’ve been attacked by some sort of dark magic, but it is all quite a lot of fun somehow.

And the bond _does_ want them to bone. It wants them to bone so badly that when Harry gets anywhere near Malfoy’s skin, it’s the only thing he can think about. They’ve spent a few hours testing exactly how close they can get, and how long it takes once they are close, before the compulsion totally takes over. In the end, Hermione’s only had to Stupefy them three times, and they know that they’re safe enough as long as they stick to hands and feet touching. It should be enough to keep them safe but not have them shagging, Hermione says. And they definitely _cannot_ shag. Even kissing on the mouth could be a problem, Hermione thinks. They don’t know what the curse intends, after all, and Hermione reminds them very sternly that, until they work it out, any sort of consummation could very well make things permanent. Which would obviously not be good, even Harry knows that.

But they get back to Grimmauld eventually, and Malfoy does his tea-making and book-thieving and couch-snuggling, and Harry is ok. He knows Hermione has a team working on the curse, and Seamus is investigating the attack, and Harry has a St Mungo’s-grade hangover potion and a perfectly-made cup of tea, and he falls asleep on his couch with his bare feet still tangled in Malfoy’s. It could be worse.

* * *

At bedtime, it gets worse. 

The rest of the day has been… well, lovely, really. Malfoy is a brilliant cook, much better than Harry, and he talks the whole time he’s cooking, and Harry stands next to him with their bare feet touching, and helps with the chopping, and listens and laughs. And then they spend the whole of dinner arguing about Quidditch tactics (and Harry doesn’t even want to think about what their coaches will say if they’re still bonded by the time their next matches come around) and they end up in the garden taking a tandem jaunt on Harry’s new Vipertooth. The Prides are still flying Cleansweeps, of course, and Malfoy has _a lot_ to say on the subject of wind drag and bristle length, and it inevitably means taking the broom up to prove him wrong, though when Harry pulls into a sharp dive with Malfoy’s nose pressed into the back of his neck, he realises that it’s probably not exactly what Hermione had intended when she told them to go home and maintain a comfortable distance. He takes them down fast. By the time they hit the ground even Malfoy is quiet, and they keep the barest brush of fingers touching when they walk back to the house in silence.

Bed is the real problem, though. 

Harry had known, intellectually, that they’d be sleeping in the same bed. No one likes an early alarm, especially when their alarm consists of agonising and excruciating pain down to their very bones and is brought about by accidentally losing touch with the person they’ve been curse-bonded to. So it obviously makes perfect sense that they’ll need to share the bed. To sleep in. Together. Harry gulps as he looks down at what he’d always felt was a perfectly respectable sized double but now looks entirely too small.

For the first time since the whole thing started, Harry feels a bit sad. It’s not that he’d ever thought he’d get to undress Malfoy, or touch him (he’d imagined it _of course_ , but it was only ever going to stay very firmly in his head). But when he’s doing it for real—sliding a hand along the bare skin of Malfoy’s stomach while Malfoy pulls his t-shirt off, feeling the cool, confident press of Malfoy’s fingers on his spine while Harry kicks his way out of his jeans—it feels like something he’s missing out on. The room is too quiet, and they’re both entirely efficient, but there’s a lingering hush of _something_ between them, and it reminds Harry that he doesn’t get to have this. Not with anyone. Not with _Malfoy_. Not for real. 

They settle on holding hands, because it seems the safest option, and it all gets a little less weird and sad when they’re settled on their pillows and Malfoy is a bit fuzzy around the edges when Harry looks at him without his glasses. Malfoy hangs a Lumos and talks very quietly about nothing in particular to Harry, punctuating every second sentence with huge, jaw-cracking yawns, and it’s so casually intimate that Harry has to close his eyes, and he doesn’t even notice slipping into sleep to the reassuring musical sound of Malfoy’s tired voice.

* * *

It’s the middle of the night when he opens his eyes, in that dense heavy darkness that always makes him feel like the only person in the world who’s awake. But tonight, he knows he’s not, because Malfoy is close behind him, and his mouth is moving over the heated skin at the base of Harry’s neck, and he’s talking, and it’s almost as though he never went to sleep at all. But he must have done, because they’ve migrated somehow. Harry is lying on his side, and Malfoy has an arm slung around his waist, and his hand is stroking, stroking, stroking at the trembling muscles of Harry’s stomach. 

“Harry,” he’s saying, almost too quietly for Harry to hear, over and over, and Harry can’t help shivering at the warmth of his own name against his skin. 

Malfoy keeps talking, and he pulls Harry closer to him, across all that careful expanse of bed. 

“We should have”—and he pauses to kiss Harry properly, open-mouthed and unrepentant, on the topmost notch of his spine—"put a pillow in between us.”

“Yes,” Harry replies, but even as he says it he knows it’s too breathless and yearning, and it sounds as though he’s agreeing to something else entirely. And then Malfoy pushes his nose into Harry’s hair and inhales, and Harry’s whole body curls around Malfoy’s anchoring arm with a shudder of what Malfoy couldn’t possibly mistake for anything other than desire.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to turn around, roll Malfoy under him, pin down all that maddening heat and just taste him, and Harry is already moving when Malfoy wrenches himself away, pulls himself over to the edge of the bed and lies there with his arm over his eyes and his breath coming fast and frantic. The pads of two of his fingers are a brand at Harry's wrist.

"Right," Harry says loudly, nonsensically. "Right."

And then, because it’s easier in the dark, he twists his wrist to catch Malfoy’s fingers in his own and asks, “How are we supposed to bear this, though?”

Malfoy laughs at that, and his fingers tighten around Harry’s, and when he speaks his voice sounds almost normal, and it makes everything feel alright again, all of a sudden. 

“It’s a lot to ask, alright. Granger should have thought of this, really. She must have known we’d… Potter, hang on! That’s it!”

Malfoy sits up, carefully staying on his own side of the bed, and uses their intertwined hands to poke Harry, hard. 

“You remember what she said to us when we were leaving the hospital?”

Harry remembers, much as he wishes he didn’t. “I got the gist of it. No kissing, no coming, basically.”

Malfoy looks triumphant, and Harry isn’t sure whether he wants to run away, or kiss the wicked curl of his mouth. “ _Not_ exactly no coming, Potter. Remember, she mentioned it a few times—we cannot assist each other to completion, I think was the expression? So…”

It sounds to Harry very much as though Malfoy is suggesting that they each have a wank, separately—or as separately as two people under a forced bonding spell can be, anyway. He should definitely say no. 

“So what, we just need to make sure we don’t get anything on each other?” he says (and that’s definitely not a no, but he doesn’t mind because it makes Malfoy laugh and laugh, which is one of Harry’s favourite things).

“Or in each other,” Malfoy replies, still laughing, but under the kiss of moonlight through the window Harry sees him swallow heavily as he says it, and Harry knows he feels it too, something sudden and heated between them in the dark.

“Okay,” Harry says simply. He’s not stupid enough to turn this down, after all. They can tell themselves it’s the bond, afterwards.

There’s a bit of a scuffle then, because they have to hold hands of course, but they’re both right-handed. Malfoy wants to switch sides so he can hold Harry’s right with his left, leaving his dominant hand free, but Harry wins by virtue of it being his bed, and also by reminding Malfoy that he’s a better left-handed Seeker. 

"Don't think I don't know that you're appealing to my vanity, Potter," he says as he links his little finger with Harry's and wriggles around in the bed, getting comfy. "I'm just taking pity on you."

There's a moment when they could stop, Harry thinks, when they're lying side by side and staring at the ceiling, barely touching. There's no madness to it now, everything is so calm. When Harry moves, he does it so slowly that it’s hardly moving at all, just the slightest rustle of bedclothes. He gives Malfoy time to stop it all, just in case, but Malfoy doesn’t. Instead, he tilts his head sideways on the pillow just a fraction, and then Harry can see where his hand is moving under the duvet, and this is really happening.

It’s not that it feels particularly good, Harry thinks. He’s a bit hot, and the bedclothes are in the way, and he’s scared to make any noise in case it breaks whatever fragile spell has been cast between them in the quietest part of the night. He wants to, though, so much that he has to grit his teeth to stop anything too soft-sounding escaping, and instead he just tightens his grip and thinks silently to himself, _Draco_.

He’s not sure how long they lie there, hot and slow and quiet in the bed, but he feels it when Draco stills, holds his breath as Draco turns in the bed.

“Harry,” he’s whispering again, and it sounds so easy coming from him. “Harry, it’s hot.”

Harry’s glad they’re whispering, because if he had to say it any louder, he thinks the words might stick in his throat. 

“We could… the blankets…”

And he chances a look left, just as Draco looks right at him, and there’s just enough light to catch another of those smiles before they both start to kick the blankets down and then there’s nothing at all between Harry’s skin and the humid air of the bedroom. Beside him, he can see a lot of Malfoy out of the corner of his eye—none of it unfamiliar or new, he’s seen almost all of Malfoy over the years, because Quidditch—but he’s never seen him with all that coiled nervous energy turned inwards like this. He can see the hitch and roll of Malfoy’s stomach muscles as he strains to keep his hips still, the gleam of moonlight over the shifting muscles of his forearm as they flex and release ever so slowly. He doesn’t look any lower down than that.

“Harry,” Malfoy begins again, and Harry wonders if he _ever_ shuts up, “Harry, what are you thinking about?”

Harry’s hand is moving faster now, because he can’t seem to help himself, and he knows Malfoy can hear the roughened edge of a groan when he answers, “What are _you_ thinking about?” And he doesn’t even care that this is all probably too much, or at least that it’s telling Malfoy too much about Harry and his stupid feelings, because he wants to know so badly what’s making Malfoy close his eyes like that as he touches himself.

But then Malfoy opens the bond link up, which is fucking cheating really when you think about it, because how’s Harry even supposed to be able to _think_ when he’s awash in all of Malfoy’s feelings, just like that? He can’t even pretend not to be watching Malfoy anymore, because it’s probably all there in the bond—all that fascination, the urge to touch—so he turns his head on the pillow and _looks_ , and lets Malfoy push images at him as their breaths and hands speed up in tandem.

It’s Harry.

Harry is in every single one of Malfoy’s images—on his broom again, in his Wasps uniform, which seems to be cut far tighter in Malfoy’s memory than it is in real life; dancing somewhere, really badly, and not caring in the least, with his arms in the air and a sliver of stomach on show below his t-shirt; Harry in the hospital, eyes glass-green and unblinking, looking more seductive than he’d imagined he could be as he moves in to mouth kisses along Malfoy’s throat. And then one final image—Harry in a beer garden, curls askew, mouth red, smiling across the table (at Draco, Harry remembers the day so well) and saying fondly, “You’re so lovely.” 

And at that, Harry feels the swell of something across the link. It’s a complicated sort of yearning, long-held and tender, undercut with a sense of being undeserving—and it’s so familiar to what Harry has been feeling for so long, that at first he thinks it’s his own feelings bleeding through. But he’d never have imagined Malfoy feeling it _back_ , and he laughs out loud in surprise and gratitude and pushes himself up on an elbow so he can properly look at Malfoy. And he’s even harder now, just from feeling Malfoy’s feelings and watching Malfoy wank himself off and thinking to himself that (any minute now, by the looks of things) he’s going to see what Malfoy looks like when he comes.

“Malfoy,” he whispers. “Draco. You’re so lovely.” 

And that does it—Malfoy’s back arches right off the bed, and he twists his hand into Harry’s so they’re clutching at each other’s fingers properly, and he comes all over his own hand and stomach so Harry can see the silvery gleam of it where the moon hits him.

Harry wants to come almost more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, but he waits until Malfoy opens his eyes again (though he’s still panting hard), and then Harry says, “This is what I think about,” and he knows Malfoy understands that he means he thinks about Malfoy’s cock and Malfoy’s hands and Malfoy’s smile—just, Malfoy spread out and wanting him in the moonlight. And then finally Harry lies back down (because _fluids_ , Hermione) and he fucks up hard into his own fist one last time, and comes with Draco’s name on his lips.

* * *

It was Jules, of course.

Hermione tells them everything when she calls them back into St Mungo’s the next morning, first thing, before they’ve had time to do much more than wake together and smile across the pillows at each other, and for Draco to kiss the back of Harry’s knuckles with such uncomplicated tenderness that Harry is almost ready to roll over and just _have_ him, bond be damned. The Floocall comes at an opportune time.

Seamus had solved the case in no time at all, because very luckily for them the bar had recently installed CCSV (still enough of a novelty in wizarding circles that Jules wouldn't have expected it). The whole thing was there, conveniently recorded for their viewing pleasure —Jules spiking one of the shots, Harry and Malfoy drinking it, Jules panicking and shooting off some sort of diversionary spell to make everyone think there was a curse. Simple really, and Jules is clearly not as thick as he looks, Harry thinks viciously. Except that he’d gone back to the bar after leaving the hospital to grab the shot glass and hide the evidence, and _that_ was on CCSV too, so he was caught rotten and he’d sung like a canary when Seamus took him in.

Harry tries not to gloat too much, but he does mention a few times that even though he’s not still friends with all his exes, at least none of them had tried to drug him with a love potion. Malfoy takes full advantage of the proximity thing and pinches him hard while ostentatiously ignoring him.

“So it’s much more simple to break now we know that it's just a potion and not a curse,” Hermione is saying briskly, though the murder in her eyes shows exactly what she thinks of Jules.

“However, before we break the bond I feel I have to tell you that there was an anomaly in the way you two reacted to the potion.” She smiles sweetly at Harry, who feels his stomach drop a bit. That look on Hermione's face never bodes well for Harry.

"The love potion was keyed into your magical signature, Malfoy. Would you believe he used a strand of your hair in it?” She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Jules is insisting that it was only meant to be a mild lust potion, just something to give Draco a nudge back to him—there was no bonding component in his brew, and we’ve confirmed that in our tests. I don’t think he’s competent enough to brew a proper bonding potion anyway, to be honest."

Malfoy and Hermione roll their eyes simultaneously, then grin at each other. It's a chilling sight.

"Technically, Harry, the potion shouldn't even have affected you, since it was brewed specifically with Malfoy in mind. So imagine my surprise that you two not only ended up bonded after it, but managed to knock yourselves out with the force of the bond in the process? I'm sure you can see why I thought my research colleagues at the Ministry should have a look at your case. All totally anonymous, of course."

There’s a bit of shouting after that—mostly Malfoy and Harry saying "no, Hermione, no", and Hermione replying "yes, Hermione, yes"—but it’s already done and the Unspeakables in the Amare room have already analysed the potions residue and the two blood samples Hermione took from them, and they’ve confirmed that the potion caused their magical cores to bond. Harry remembers the feeling of it, something curious and new entering him, and the tug and pull of his own magic searching for that same _something_. And then Hermione tells them the reason their magic had bonded and Harry goes very quiet.

“This is truly horrifying,” Malfoy says flatly.

“Isn’t it just,” Hermione replies gleefully. “Soulmates. Complimentary cores. Who would have thought it, eh Harry? Of course they’re very keen to get you both in and examine you properly, but I told them your desire for anonymity has to be respected.”

Harry hugs Hermione with his free arm. 

“Thank you,” he says fervently. “We’re not talking about this ever again, okay?”

“Absolutely not,” Malfoy agrees. “This doesn’t leave the room. Granger, you took an oath when you donned that Healer’s uniform. Which means _no telling Weasley_.”

Hermione’s voice is deceptively bland. 

“Of course. But you realise that you still have to break the bond? Luckily for you, it’s a simple fix. What shall we call it? True love’s kiss?”

“Shut up, Hermione,” Harry mutters, just as Malfoy buries his head in Harry’s chest and shouts “I don’t have to listen to this slander!”

And of course it’s fine. It’s totally fine. It’s just Harry hasn’t kissed Malfoy yet. He’s wanted to for a long time, and he never thought he’d get to, and he’s only just getting used to the fact that Malfoy might want him to, too. And now it’s a big deal and a soulmate thing and they’re going to have to _talk_ about it instead of just getting to go home together and fuck each other in Harry’s big bed.

And maybe it’s the bond, or maybe it’s just Malfoy knowing what Harry needs, but he tugs Harry by the wrist and very politely asks Hermione if she could give them some privacy, and she does, though looks entirely too happy about it as she goes.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” Malfoy says. “I know you’re working yourself up to some big emotional showdown. Stop it.” He gives Harry that smile of his, the one that softens everything he says until it becomes something sweet. “It’s kind of a nice thing, to know that we… well, to _know_ that this is something. But we knew that anyway. So I think we should just ignore the love thing for now, and skip straight to the fucking.”

It makes sense, Harry thinks. A fairly sound plan, all told.

“Alright,” he agrees. “But I’m going to kiss you now, and it’s our first proper kiss so I’m going to make it a good one.”

Malfoy murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like _please_ , and his eyes are already fluttering shut as his hand slides warm and firm up Harry's back under his t-shirt. 

Harry kisses him.

It’s the first of many—he doesn’t need a soulbond to tell him that he’s never going to want to stop doing this—and it feels like something brand new, something just for them. They keep it short, just enough time to feel the bond pulling tight and then snapping, and then one more brush of lips that’s only for them, the answer to the question neither of them would ever have asked each other.

“Let’s get out of here,” Malfoy says, and he sounds raw and sated already. “I have plans for you that don’t involve Granger.”

They keep their fingers intertwined.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thanks for reading.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you thought of this, and I welcome chats on Tumblr too - [I'm @tackytigerfic](https://tumblr.com/blog/tackytigerfic) on there!


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